I played this when it first came out years ago and was not impressed. The world was lifeless then with most of the quests coming from computer terminals. Had heard they revamped the game with NPCs and voice acting, and meant to give it another shot for years. Finally came back to it in 2024 to play co-op. The updates improved the game a lot.

While there are other real-life players in the world, you can turn on pacifist mode where you can't be killed by them so it doesn't just devolve into PvP and hunting down n00bs for sport. My experience has been that other players I see just ignore you and do their own thing, or might give you a couple stimpacks and be on their way.

The game might not be as polished or strong of a single player experience as one in the series dedicated to SP, but it's still good. If you liked New Vegas, 3, and 4, I think you'll like this too. You can skip the DLC and paid Atomic Workshop stuff.

Note if playing co-op and on teams... Both players need to initiate and do quest steps individually otherwise the quest items, dialogs, etc. don't appear. For example players 1 & 2 need to talk to the same NPC individually, even if you're standing side-by-side. If a quest starts for player 1 because they entered a building while player 2 is wandering around outside, the quest isn't active for player 2...they also need to trigger it by going in the building. This can get a little confusing especially if lots of side and miscellaneous quests are getting picked up (as can happen in FO games when you do something small like choose a certain dialog with an NPC).

Note - I've heard that after lvl 50, there's probably more emphasis on the MMO aspect of this. I'm really only looking to play this game like I would a single-player FO game, but with co-op. I don't see myself continuing to play this into the thousands of hours. If you're looking for a similar experience, I would definitely recommend getting this on sale.

Each step forward comes with one step backwards - Bethesda has (generally) okay ideas and usually bad implementation. Feedback is ignored, bugs are not fixed, performance is abysmal. Fallout 76 is better than what it was, but it could be so much superior, which is especially more apparent once your initial 'wow' first impression wears off.

I feel like I'm being kept checking in on the game from time to time purely due to sunk cost fallacy, because if each new addition is bugged or badly thought out, daily grind is boring and there's nothing worthy long-term to grind for (I would just mindlessly do my Dailies while watching TV series on the side), FOMO/monetization is really ugly, the game is bugged in ways I would not have imagined (half the walls, ceilings, and floors disappear if I face North in one Daily Op map, I don't have any other issues looking in the other directions), and bad server quality means enemies often struggle to respond to being hit resulting in unsatisfying combat, then I really ask myself why do I still bother.

I've been playing since the launch. Somehow I escaped most of the bugs, but in the beginning things were SO boring. Adding the NPCs saved this game!

Only issue I have now is game crashing. After I downloaded 2 rather large size programs, Fallout 76 hates running, even if I close said background programs completely.

I wish atomic shop merch was not so expensive. the recent price deduction to bundles if you already have a piece is a nice save.

Over all 10/10 my favourite Fallout Game, and I've been in the franchise for 15 years. I'm a bit biased though, because I'm appalachian myself, its like playing fallout even more IRL.